I may mention that the penitent parishioners very prudently reserved the king's rights. As the king claimed the deanery of St. Burian as a royal peculiar exempt from ordinary jurisdiction, and eventually made good his claim, it is plain that neither the promises of the parishioners nor the polyglot sermon of the Bishop, could have had any lasting effect. The patronage was soon after conferred on the Black Prince, and through him transmitted to the present Duke of Cornwall, by whose spontaneous act this obnoxious exemption from episcopal control was wholly and for ever renounced within the last two years. The successor of Grandison may now, therefore, visit the churches of the deanery, excommunicate the ministers and parishioners, and interrogate presentees, without let or hindrance; and, since the language of Cornwall died with old Dolly Pentreath, his lordship will not require the hermeneutic services either of the present or the _late incumbent_ of St. Just.
I was a few days ago induced to consider whence the common expression "richly deserved" could be derived. It is used by Addison and his contemporaries, but I have not been able to find it in writers of an earlier period. Possibly the reading of some of your contributors may supply instances of its occurrence which may prove more precisely its origin and history.
The phrase, in its literal sense, is anomalous and unmeaning. We may properly say that a reward or punishment has been "fully deserved" or, by a common mode of exaggeration, we may say that a thing has been "abundantly deserved:" but "richly deserved" seems a false figure of speech, and presents to the mind an obvious incongruity of ideas. Dr. Johnson cites a passage from Addison, in which chastisement is said to have been "richly deserved," and says that it is used ironically to signify "truly" or "abundantly."
Of the meaning of the expression--now by usage become trivial--there can, of course, be no doubt; but how came so inappropriate a thought as _wealth_ to be applied to desert? The inaptitude of the expression suggests the presumption that it is a corruption of some more correct phrase; and I venture to throw out a conjecture, for confirmation or refutation by the more extensive reading of some of your philological contributors, that it is corrupted through the medium of oral pronunciation from "righteously deserved."